单选题
The Cherokee Nation

Long before the white man came to America, the land belonged to the American Indian nations. The nation of the Cherokees lived in what is now the southeastern part of the United States.
After the white man came, the Cherokees copied many of their ways. One Cherokee named Sequoyah saw how important reading and writing was to the white man. He decided to invent a way to write down the spoken Cherokee language. He began by making word pictures. For each word he drew a picture. But that proved impossible—there were just too many words. Then he took the 85 sounds that made up the language. Using his own imagination and an English spelling book, Sequoyah invented a sign for each sound. His alphabet proved amazingly easy to learn. Before long, many Cherokees knew how to read and write in their own language. By 1828, they were even printing their own newspaper.
In 1830, the US Congress passed a law. It allowed the government to remove Indians from their lands. The Cherokees refused to go. They had lived on their lands for centuries. It belonged to them. Why should they go to a strange land far beyond the Mississippi River?
The army was sent to drive the Cherokees out. Soldiers surrounded their villages and marched them at gunpoint into the western territory. The sick, the old and the small children went in carts, along with their belongings. The rest of the people marched on foot or rode on horseback. It was November, yet many of them still wore their summer clothes. Cold and hungry, the Cherokees were quickly exhausted by the hardships of the journey. Many dropped dead and were buried by the roadside. When the last group arrived in their new home in March 1839, more than 4,000 had died. It was indeed a march of death.
单选题 The Cherokee Nation used to live ______.
  • A. on the American continent
  • B. in the southeastern part of the US
  • C. beyond the Mississippi River
  • D. in the western territory
【正确答案】 B
【答案解析】[解析] 根据第一段最后一句可知，他们住在“the southeastern part of the United States”，所以选项B为正确答案。选项A范围太广，C项和D项都是指他们后来迁移的地方，所以错误。
单选题 One of the ways that Sequoyah copied from the white man is the way of ______.
  • A. writing down the spoken language
  • B. making word pictures
  • C. teaching his people reading
  • D. printing their own newspaper
【正确答案】 A
【答案解析】[解析] 根据第二段第三句可知赛阔亚决定发明一种将口头语言写下来的方法；后面具体讲了他是怎么发明的。所以A项是正确的。B项“用图形表示单词”，C项“教会人们阅读”，D项“印刷它们自己的报纸”，这些都不准确。
单选题 A law was passed in 1830 to ______.
  • A. allow the Cherokees to stay where they were
  • B. send the army to help the Cherokees
  • C. force the Cherokees to move westward
  • D. forbid the Cherokees to read their newspapers
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】[解析] 根据第三段可知这项法律迫使彻罗基人向西迁移，所以选项C为正确选项。A项“让彻罗基人留在他们原来的地方”，这明显不对；B项“派军队帮助彻罗基人”，这与第四段中“marched them at gunpoint”相矛盾；D项“禁止彻罗基人阅读他们的报纸”，文中没有提到。
单选题 When the Cherokees began to leave their lands ______.
  • A. they went in carts
  • B. they went on horseback
  • C. they marched on foot
  • D. all of the above
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】[解析] 根据第四段可知，“The sick, the old and the small children went in carts, along with their belongings. The rest of the people…”，因此，D项all of the above最全面。
单选题 Many Cherokees died on their way to their new home mainly because ______.
  • A. they were not willing to go there
  • B. the government did not provide transportation
  • C. they did not have enough food and clothes
  • D. the journey was long and boring
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】[解析] 根据第四段倒数第四句“Cold and hungry, the CheroKees were quickly exhausted by the hardships of the journey.”可知，他们没有足够的食物和衣服，所以C项为正确答案。A项“他们不愿意去那里”，这是事实，但不是他们死亡的主要原因；B项“政府没有提供交通工具”，文中没有提及；D项“路途遥远而且令人乏味”，这也不是主要原因。